Is killing a witch always a bad thing?

[Mister Agenda]

"That's one of the points I am making here. If the actions of a practicing witch can be justified in her/his death under our laws of self defense, how much more free would those laws be 300 years ago?"

Could you run that one by me again? - I'm really struggling to understand what you are trying to say.

(practising and defence - just for reference)

If the a case for self defense can be made for the death of a witch today. Then how is justification for killing a witch questioned when it was done 300 years ago in every single case?

If you take away the magic, you still have one person or a group of people tormenting and oppressing another.

Today, in the developed world at least, you would have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. You should have had to prove it 300 years ago, too.

[downbeatplumb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjeqRHdBwkY

[Doubting Thomas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjeqRHdBwkY

I'd like to think that we progressed past that, but here comes Drich with his question of whether or not one should kill a witch who cast a spell upon them.

I thought this was 2013, not 1613. Looks like we skeptics have a lot of educating to do. The question is, how do you educate someone who wants to remain willfully ignorant?

[Faith No More]

If the a case for self defense can be made for the death of a witch today. Then how is justification for killing a witch questioned when it was done 300 years ago in every single case?

If you take away the magic, you still have one person or a group of people tormenting and oppressing another.

Do you honestly think that the witch burnings were self-defense and not someone merely using your holy book to justify ridding themselves of an unwanted woman?

[Violet]

More than likely if your coming into this thread to answer this question yes,(it is always wrong to kill a witch) you are probably working under the assumption that all practitioners of witchcraft are benign, misunderstood people.

I was going to say 'no'... really don't know why you opened with that paragraph.

Value judgements are highly subjective, and depend on numerous factors. It is quite possible that it would not be a bad thing to kill even a benign, misunderstood person...

And real witches, well... don't get any funny ideas, dirchie

In the Spirit of Halloween the family and I like to watch scary movies and the two new ones we've seen are "the conjouring" and the new rob zombie Salem witch/Rose Mary's baby cross over thing. Both with out giving anything away had to do with witches/people who acted on the behalf of demonic forces. Killing, tormenting, and feeding off of others. This was done for the most part supernaturally. So part one of my question is if you and your family were being tormented as these two movies depict would you be justified in killing a witch in this day and age? What about 2 to 3 hundred years ago?

Yes, yes. The problem being, of course: you'd have to know... and if a witch was cursing you, I'd expect your knowledge of who-done-it to be suspect. Like... they'd have to be very specifically letting you know who was doing this to them... and then you'd have to distinguish whether it was a frame-job or a simple retardation.

The latter case would probably take care of itself, to be honest. Best response: countermeasure. Killing could be that countermeasure, again... the problem is in the knowing, and whether or not the knowing is suspect.

Second part what if a group of witches were tormenting, killing members of your family or pets and generally feeding off of the torment and terror they visited upon you using non supernatural means? Again in this day and age or what about 200 years ago?

Umm... is that any different from supernatural means? I don't follow. The same problems remain. If you've got a problem with a coven, and killing could solve that problem... then it will not *always* be a bad thing to kill them.

You might just get lucky.

In short where does the modern sense of morality draw the line, or is their no line because the desire to be politically correct has one negate common sense/self defense because these people gather and worship under a P/C protected religion?

Probably right about the point where the person/coven is terrorizing and or explicitly threatening your family. Morality being subjective, of course, this may not always be the case #Job

---

Do you honestly think that the witch burnings were self-defense and not someone merely using your holy book to justify ridding themselves of an unwanted woman?

It's certainly not impossible that witch burnings are sometimes performed out of perceived self-defense. Should, of course, they actually be able to wield advanced power... then it could even be for very real self defense.

Contingent, of course... upon magic and/or ritual actually working.

Also, @dirch: The laws of 300 years ago were brutal, clearly ineffective, and harshly administered far too freely.

[max-greece]

"That's one of the points I am making here. If the actions of a practicing witch can be justified in her/his death under our laws of self defense, how much more free would those laws be 300 years ago?"

Could you run that one by me again? - I'm really struggling to understand what you are trying to say.

(practising and defence - just for reference)

If the a case for self defense can be made for the death of a witch today. Then how is justification for killing a witch questioned when it was done 300 years ago in every single case?

If you take away the magic, you still have one person or a group of people tormenting and oppressing another.

OK - not in every single case but do you have any feel for the numbers involved? It would appear that the general consensus is that the vast majority of cases involved entirely innocent parties whose crime was in being a woman, maybe too independent for someone's liking, maybe living alone, or ugly or old.

Even if there were a few women using the threat of witchcraft to dominate others the burning of so many women over such a long period of time across Europe is still totally unjustifiable.

[bladevalant546]

Minus when it was a human sacrifice or loss of property, which can be proven through standard legal practices. Killing someone for because of a superstition is foolish and never justified.

[CleanShavenJesus]

If you're suggesting we kill this witch, I'll kill you first!

[Ryantology]

If you're suggesting we kill this witch, I'll kill you first!

Or this one:



milftastic.

[CleanShavenJesus]

Ah, the American Horror Story bitch. I tried watching that show because I heard very good things about it, but I didn't like it very much.